


The Snooper and the Altruist

by EmmaTheRevelator (MaybeItWasMemphis), MaybeItWasMemphis



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Smut, Lemon, May/December Relationship, North Carolina, Older Man/Younger Woman, Romance, Smut, Superheroes, The Lost Colony of Roanoke
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:08:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 14,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22646920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaybeItWasMemphis/pseuds/EmmaTheRevelator, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaybeItWasMemphis/pseuds/MaybeItWasMemphis
Summary: Marleigh Chandler was an eighteen-year-old computer genius and preterhuman tracker. Living in the small town of Quiet Bluff, North Carolina...there was always someone to investigate and track. More unexplained things happened every day. A seemingly normal person grows fangs and tries to kill a cheerleader on Tuesday and on Friday, Farmer West's favorite cow grows two new heads.The biggest mystery for Marleigh is that of her best friend, Wyatt Dawson. She knows his DNA must have been altered in the Lachlan Warehouse explosion of 2000 but, unlike other preterhumans, Wyatt keeps his powers hidden...even from her.During the course of Marleigh's search for the truth, she falls into the sights of Alistair Lachlan. To protect her best friend's secret, Marleigh finds herself making a deal with the devil...or does she?
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	1. May 2, 2000

_“Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.”_

**\- William Shakespeare**

“Dad, can I sleep on the couch in here?”

Alistair Lachlan turned to find his seven-year-old son, Patrick, standing in the doorway of his study. The young boy's jet-black curly hair was sleep tussled and his blue eyes glassy. He must have been awoken by the raging thunderstorm outside. When a particularly loud clap of thunder shook the house and Patrick jumped skittishly, his suspicions were confirmed.

“Patrick, you must stop doing this son.” Alistair stood from his sturdy wooden desk and walked to stand in front of his son. “Fear is only as deep as the mind allows.” He rattled off an old Japanese proverb. He had no idea how to comfort the boy. That had always been Christina's job and his wife had been dead for over a year. Besides, fear was good for the kid. It built character. Patrick had been sleeping in the study while he worked more and more lately. They had barely spent any time together, Patrick being a mama's boy, prior to Christina's death. Now, the child was attached to his damn hip whenever he was home. The kiddie shrink he had hired had assured him that Patrick was just mourning the death of his mother and the phase would pass but it wasn't happening fast enough. He loved his son, he truly did but this was becoming incredibly irksome.

Alistair had moved them from the hustle and bustle of Dare City to Quiet Bluff, the home of his company's flagship polymers plant, in an attempt to help Patrick get a sense of normalcy in his young life. It had been three months. Why wasn't it working?

When another clap of thunder shook the mansion so badly that he almost lost his footing and a panicked Patrick scrambled to cling to his side, Alistair relented. “Alright... but this is the last time.” Truth be told, the storm was actually starting to shake him up a little.

Patrick, who had come prepared with a blanket and pillow, went and made himself comfortable on the red leather sofa that sat in front of the marble fireplace. Alistair went back to his desk to finish going over the report on Lachlan Industries expected second-quarter profits when there was a knock on the study door.

Looking up, Alistair found his butler, Roland, standing in the doorway holding a cordless phone in his hand. “Sorry to disturb you, sir, but I have an urgent call from Tag Chandler.”

“What could be so urgent at this hour?” he demanded. It was ten at night for pete's sake. Why would his plant manager be calling him?

“He says lightning's struck the PBX building creating a fire and they are having a hard time putting it out.”

The PBX building was where Lachlan Industries manufactured TNT for demolition companies and high powered explosives for the military. If the fire wasn't contained before it reached the supply room the consequences could be catastrophic.

“Put him through!” Alistair barked, making Patrick jump up to see what was going on.

“What's wrong, dad?” Patrick asked, a little quiver in his lip.

“Not now, Patrick!” Alistair waved his son off as his private line rang. “Explain, NOW!” he answered the phone.

“Mr. Lachlan, lightning hit a generator and ignited the south wall of the PBX building. We have the sprinklers going and all available water sources have been diverted to the building. The fire department's on the scene and they've called in reinforcements from Charlotte but so far we can't contain it.” Alistair could hear the panic in his plant manager's voice.

“How long before the fire reaches that supply room?” This time Alistair jumped right along with his son when thunder shook the study.

“It's not the supply room we're worried about, sir,” Tag replied grimly. “We've only got forty-five minutes before the fire reaches the lab that contains Project Cambire.”

Alistair's heart almost stopped. Project Cambire was a missile that had been contracted by the CIA. The missile was a delicate mixture of tetryl and nitroglycerin mixed with something called zmiana. Zmiana was a mutagen chemical designed by CIA scientists to cause horrible mutations in those poisoned with it. The Cambire missile was designed to be a mini atomic bomb. The zmiana had an agent that intensified existing explosives. The damage would spread a mile. Lachlan Manor sat exactly one mile from Lachlan Polymers.

“Evacuate all non-essential personnel, that includes you, Mr. Chandler,” he ordered.

“Yes, sir... and Mr. Lachlan? It might be wise to call the mayor and evacuate the areas around the plant.” Clearly, Tag had little faith in the fire being extinguished. If he was this concerned, it would probably be best to move Patrick and the household staff into the mansion's panic room.

“I'll do that,” he agreed. “Phone me back when the plant has been evacuated.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Lachlan.”

When Tag had given his estimate of time before the plant blew... he had forgotten about a shipment of RDX explosives that had been delivered to the PBX building earlier in the day... a delivery that was sitting on the loading dock that was located on the south side of the building.

Alistair had barely hung up the phone before what sounded a lot like thunder caused by an angry Zeus shook the entire mansion. Barely a second later, the windows shattered, sending shards of glass flying everywhere. A wave of heat, that was so hot it felt cold, swept over the room like a gust of wind in summer. The last Alistair would hear before blacking out was the terrified screams of his son.


	2. October 28, 2017

**OCTOBER 28, 2017**

**QUIET BLUFF, NORTH CAROLINA**

  
  


“Hey, Mar, Dare City was named in honor of who?”

“Nice try,” Marleigh Chandler laughed at her best friend. “I'm not helping you with your social studies homework, Wyatt Dawson.” She silently celebrated when the DMV file she was looking for finally pulled up on her computer screen.

After school in the afternoons, Marleigh worked with her father as a tracker. Trackers located and kept tabs on preterhumans. Preterhumans were people whose DNA had been altered by the catastrophic Lachlan Warehouse explosion seventeen years earlier. These preterhumans tended to have incredible superhuman abilities – flight, invisibility, super strength – you name it, and all of them were blessed with the power of accelerated healing. Not a single preterhuman had died since the explosion... not even from natural causes. While most preterhumans hid their powers from society, and some used them to become real-life superheroes – like nearby Dare City's Yellow Phoenix – still others came unhinged by the extreme burden placed on them by their abilities. Those preterhumans were dealt with by the Preterhuman Division of the North Carolina State Police. The police tended to get most of their intel from trackers.

Marleigh's father, Tag, had started the Chandler Tracking Company almost sixteen years earlier, right after the first known preterhuman attack. She had been just a baby at the time of the warehouse explosion but Marleigh knew that her father had been the plant manager at the time and her mother had been killed in the blast. Marleigh was pretty sure her father blamed himself for the disaster and that tracking preterhumans was his way of somehow paying penance.

“Ha!” Wyatt got her attention from the desk that sat across from hers in the tiny little company office. “Google was more helpful than you. Dare City was named for Virginia Dare, the first child born in the American colonies.”

Marleigh looked up and dryly asked, “what? Do you want me to give you a treat for having to look up a fact that you should have learned in elementary school?”

“Damn, claws away, kitten,” Wyatt laughed. “What has you so worked up? I know it's not a lack of caffeine because I bought you a coffee before school, a soda at lunch, and I brought you a Redbull when I came into work. I know bad things happen when too much blood gets in your caffeine system.”

Marleigh hit the print button on her laptop and got to her feet from her desk chair. “It's just this preter that I've been looking for. A lot of unexplained fires seem to happen around this woman, Wyatt... and she's a teacher. She's surrounded by kids all day, every day.”

“What's her name?” Wyatt got to his feet. “I'll go and check her out; see if she's dangerous.”

Wyatt was a six-foot tall linebacker on the Quiet Bluff High School's football team who worked for Marleigh's dad part-time. He did recon (spying) and was the best there was at it. He always managed to get the needed information.

“Tara Marks.” She grabbed the paper out of the printer with the woman's personal information and license photo on it and handed it to him.


	3. The Lost Colony

There was only one coffee shop in all of Quiet Bluff. It was located on Virginia Street (Main Street) and was called The Lost Colony. The building that housed the shop and the adjacent bookstore had once been a firehouse and a fireman's pole ran from the second floor down to the first. Every kid in town had gone down it at least once before the shop's manager, old Mrs. Herschel, had put up a sign declaring it off-limits to customers. She had put the sign up right after Marleigh had gone down it on a dare from Wyatt when they were in the 7th grade. Marleigh had let go of the pole too early and ended up crashing down onto a nearby table. On top of breaking the table, she had also broken her left wrist and put a dent in her father's bank account when he had to pay for the damage.

The coffee that was served at The Lost Colony was horrible. It wasn't uncommon for folks around Quiet Bluff to refer to it as mud. Still, it was cheap and Mrs. Herschel would let you stay as long as you wanted so long as you bought one cup. If she really liked you, she'd give you free refills of the toxic brown sludge that she called coffee. The shop was Marleigh's favorite place to study. She was a senior and taking AP honors classes to try and boost her academic resume. If she wanted to have a shot at getting accepted into Dare City University she really had to work for it. DCU was a private college that was largely funded by Alistair Lachlan, the billionaire CEO of Lachlan Industries. Everything about the school was top of the line, from its professors all the way down to its equipment and facilities. Even if you were an in-state student DCU was harder to get into than both Harvard and Princeton combined.

“What's got you thinkin' so hard today, sweetie pie?” Mrs. Herschel arrived at Marleigh's corner booth and went to refill her cup. She frowned slightly when she discovered it still full.

“I have a report due at school on Monday and I'm having trouble coming up with enough information to give it any substance.” Marleigh reached up and unclasped her hair, running a hand through her shoulder length blonde curls.

Mrs. Herschel sat the coffee pot she was holding down on the table and took a seat across from her. “Well, what's the report about?”

“The history of Quiet Bluff from its settlement to today. My problem is that I have a huge gap once I get to the year I was born. I know the basic history but no one I know who remembers will talk about it. It's like everyone wants to forget that the year 2000 ever happened.” Marleigh knew she was ranting but she needed to get it out. Mrs. Herschel, maternal and childless, never minded. She knew that Marleigh didn't have a mom so she was always there to lend a female ear when the occasion called for it.

“That was a very dark time in this town, the state and country too. First, the warehouse explosion and then not even a year later 9/11 happened. The early 2000s were just a bad point in history.” Mrs. Herschel sounded sad and that's because she was. Mr. Herschel had been killed in the warehouse explosion just like Marleigh's mom. Her nephew, Otis, had been killed on 9/11 when he couldn't escape the South Tower of the World Trade Center before its collapse. From what Marleigh had heard, his was one of the numerous bodies never recovered from Ground Zero. The early 2000s certainly were a devastating time for Mrs. Herschel.

“Just because times were bad doesn't mean we should just forget,” Marleigh shook her head. “That kind of denial isn't healthy... especially for an entire town.”

“No one forgot anything, sweetie pie.” Mrs. Herschel reached in her apron and pulled out a pen and paper. “We just don't like being reminded of things that hurt. Take it from an old woman, you can't live your life in the past and be happy.” She scribbled on the pad of paper before tearing off the top sheet, folding it and passing it across the table. “If you really want to know about 2000 in Quiet Bluff, go and see her.”


	4. 1287 Croatoan Highway

Mrs. Herschel had to be playing some kind of a practical joke on her. It was either that or Marleigh was parked in front of the wrong house. Well, house was too strong of a word for the yellow (we're talking banana) dwelling with the peeling paint that Marleigh highly suspected contained enough lead to kill a small classroom full of children. It was more of a ramshackle double wide that was slowly being swallowed by the out of control front lawn. The grass was waist high and went all the way up the front door. Literally. There was grass growing up between the boards of the wooden do-it-yourself front porch. Marleigh double checked the address she had written down in her World History notebook. 1287 Croatoan Highway. She glanced at the rusty house numbers that were located to the left of the front door. The two was upside down and the seven was half hidden by a screen door that had obviously fallen off and been leaned against the side of the house and been forgotten about but she was confident that she had the right address.

To be cautious, Marleigh slipped a can of pepper spray into the front of her messenger bag before stepping out of the red 1996 Taurus rustbucket that she affectionately named Francis. As she very carefully walked up the wooden steps she noticed a light up sign that read PSHYIC. It was dusty and obviously hadn't been turned on in a long time. Marleigh wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing. Taking a deep breath, she patted her back jean pocket to make sure she had her cell phone...just in case. Then, she knocked sharply – there wasn't a doorbell – on the door three times.

A loud booming issued from the house and Marleigh could head the sounds of paws running along some kind of hard surface.

“Lucifer! Away from the door! Go to your bed!” The female voice that issued from within the house was so raspy that Marleigh was willing to bet money that she smoked.

The door jerked open. Seriously, the door was so old and poorly made that it appeared the only way to open it was by using extreme force. The woman who stood panting on the other side of the door looked like a Native American medicine woman...from the bogus and often highly racist old wild wild west shows that were popular in the last 19th century. She had long black hair that had streaks of gray in it and she had braided a few feathers into it. She had high cheekbones, deep-set dark eyes, and lips that she kept glossed to accentuate their natural pink color. She wore enough makeup to give Tammy Faye pause. For real, it wouldn't hurt her to ease up on the black eyeliner and blue mascara. This woman was very obviously using her home's cush location on Croatoan Highway to scam gullible tourists out of their hard earned money. Her whole life was one big tourist trap that she exploited her heritage to set.

“Hi, my name i –“

“Marleigh Chandler,” the woman nodded. “I know.

“Let me guess...the spirits told you?” Marleigh tried really hard not to roll her eyes.

“No,” the woman shook her head. “I wouldn't bother the spirits with questions I already know the answers to. Lottie Herschel called and told me you'd be stopping by.”

Oh. Duh.


	5. Sequoya

The middle-aged woman chuckled huskily. “My name's Sequoya Ahuli.”

“Is that name for real or did you make that up for business,” Marleigh blurted out. Wow. That was rude and it was now too late to take it back. She had really gone and stuck her foot in her mouth.

Luckily, Sequoya apparently had a sense of humor and laughed. “Lottie said you were the type of girl who said whatever was on her mine. That's a nice quality to have, honesty, don't lose it.”

Marleigh was a touch confused. Had Sequoya just complimented her for being rude? If all the adults in her life had done that she would have grown up to be a raging bitch.

“Lottie said you wanted to ask me some questions?”

“Oh, yeah,” Marleigh nodded. “If you wouldn't mind, of course.” Marleigh kind of hoped she minded so she could get the hell away from Miss Cleo's Native American cousin.

“No,” Sequoya smiled and waved her hand. “I have the time. Business is slow with the tourist season ending anyway. Come on inside, my dear.” She stepped aside to allow Marleigh room to enter the trailer. “Don't mind Lucifer. He's all bark and no bite. If you feel something brush your leg, it's just the cat, Cain.”

“Lucifer and Cain,” Marleigh couldn't help but wonder aloud. What kind of person named their pets after the world's first murderer and Satan himself? Not a normal, that was for damn sure.

“Terribly tragic souls,” Sequoya shook her head sadly. “They were destroyed by jealousy, jealousy that was brought on by a need for love. Lucifer fell from Heaven because of his need for God's love and attention. Some say Cain walks the earth to this day for the same reason. Very misunderstood men.”

Cain killed his brother in cold blood. Lucifer started a war for Heaven because he was throwing a temper tantrum over the whole God creating humanity thing. Now he was the Prince of Darkness and lived in a cage in Hell. He was literally in time-out until the apocalypse. Yeah. Those two dudes were totally misunderstood. Sequoya was clearly a lunatic.

Sequoya led Marleigh into the living room. The furniture all looked like she had purchased it from the Brady Bunch...after the family had used it for several generations. If Marleigh was forced to give the theme of the room a description she'd say: 60's flower child had a baby with Harry Potter and threw up a thrift store's rejects. In the corner in a wicker dog basket lay a medium-sized gray dog that was so ugly and mean looking that Marleigh couldn't hazard a guess as to its breed. Noticing the angry glare he was sending in her direction, she suddenly found Lucifer to be a fitting name for the demonic looking canine.

“What kind of questions did you want to ask me, my dear? Readings are thirty dollars and you can add an aura cleanse for an extra twenty bucks.” Sequoya took a seat on the green couch and nodded for her to sit in the pink floral chair that looked like it would collapse any second. 

Marleigh gingerly sat down and shook her head. “I don't need a reading and my aura is perfectly fine, thank you very much. I'm writing a report for school about the history of Quiet Bluff. Mrs. Herschel said you were the woman to talk to about the year 2000.”

Sequoya grew excited and eagerly nodded her head. “I am,” she assured. “But to understand what happened in 2000, you have to go back a little earlier to 1999.”

“What happened in 1999?” Besides her birth of course.

“Oh, it was beautiful,” Sequoya clapped her hands together. “Hurricane Floyd struck us head on and when it did the spirits fell to earth.”

Spirits? Alrighty then. It appeared that Marleigh had purchased an express ticket on the crazy train and Sequoya was the conductor.


	6. Spirits and Wings

“You're saying that spirits from the other side fell to earth during Hurricane Floyd?” Marleigh was going to get Mrs. Herschel back for this.

Sequoya was obviously a liar looking to make a quick buck. Either that or she was insane. It was possibly both but no matter which way she looked at it, it all boiled down to the same thing. Marleigh had wasted an afternoon that she could have spent doing actual research for her report. 

“No,” Sequoya shook her head and closed her eyes. She appeared to be pretending that she was in a trance-like state but in reality, she looked like a drunk who had suddenly forgotten how to open his eyes. “These spirits didn't come from beyond the veil,” she was now drawing out her words like she was an overenthusiastic tour guide at a Halloween haunted house. “No,” her eyes snapped open like someone had just poked her in the ass with a cattle prod. “These spirits have always been here. They were here first...just on a different plain. Hurricane Floyd opened the gate between the plains and in the spirits flew. Everything that happened in Quiet Bluff in the year 2000 happened because of the spirits. The warehouse explosion that caused the preterhumans happened during a storm caused by the Great Spirit sealing the gates between the plains.”

“Um. Uh. Kay,” Marleigh was at a complete loss as for what to say. She had never been up against this level of crazy before. That was saying something given how many preterhumans she dealt with on a weekly basis. “Is that all you know about the year 2000 in Quiet Bluff?” She could think of literally nothing else intelligent (or polite) to say.

“No,” Sequoya began toying with an amulet that hung from her neck. “The alpha walks with man and the spirits. He's angry that gate was closed.”

Marleigh slowly began to get to her feet. “Wow. So much useful information for my report but I really need to get going. I have to be at work soon. Thank you so much for your time. You were such a huge help.” She hadn't lied this much since she had broken curfew after prom because she and Wyatt had gotten super drunk at an after party held down on the shores of Blackbeard's River. 

Sequoya got to her feet to walk her out. “It was no trouble.” When they arrived back at the front door, Sequoya blocked Marleigh from leaving and took her hands and held them. “I like to leave my guests with a little riddle for luck.”

“Uh...okay?” Marleigh nodded. If it got her out of Crazy Town she'd listen to whatever the hell the mayor had to say.

Sequoya held eye contact with Marleigh as she spoke. “What is true may appear rotten but common sense must not be forgotten. Not all is as depicted, bad are not all the gifted. Don't fight what seems addictive, it's a blessing, not a curse with which you are afflicted.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Marleigh forced a smile as she pulled her hands free and beat a hasty retreat back to Francis. She didn't know why but she felt the need to write Sequoya's riddle down in her notebook while she sat waiting for Francis' engine to heat up. She guessed it was the poetry of the words. She had always been a sucker for pretty rhymes. Just as she was about to put the car in drive, her phone started ringing. It was Wyatt. “What's up, Wyatt? Oh, boy, do I have a story to tell you.”

“I'll bet my story's better. Remember Tara the flaming wonder?” Marleigh wondered if Wyatt even comprehended how homophobic his words might sound to an outsider. Probably not given how truly airheaded the farm boy could be. “Yeah, I just watched that chick sprout wings and fly away.”

Wings? Had he seriously just said wings? Well. That most certainly was a new one.


	7. Midnight Purple

Marleigh met up with Wyatt in the parking lot of Quiet Bluff Elementary School. It was dark so the lot was abandoned except for a blue work van that belonged to the school janitor. “Okay,” she said as she stepped out of Francis and slammed the door. “You need to explain this whole wing situation,” she walked up to Wyatt who was leaning against the hood of his beaten to hell, mid-90's red Jeep Cherokee with his arms folded across his broad chest.

“Well, fire bird lady works here as a fifth-grade teacher.” Wyatt nodded towards the dated-looking elementary school building. “The first day I followed her, I didn't see much but today – wow – that's all I can say.”

Marleigh put her hands on her hips. “I need you to say a bit more than that.” She tapped her foot against the asphalt impatiently. “Do we have a problem? Are we starting a file on her or are we turning her in?”

“She doesn't seem dangerous,” Wyatt shook his head. “She can manipulate fire but the only reason I know that is because I watched her light the fire put in her yard for her boyfriend. Dude used her like a damn lighter.”

“And the wings,” Marleigh urged him on impatiently. “You told me this woman grew wings and flew away. That's not normal...even for a pretahuman.”

Wyatt nodded. “Tara's place is right on the beach so I was able to watch her from behind a sand dune. Roughly two hours ago she got a call on her house phone. When she hung up, I watched her hurry to the backyard. She didn't grow the wings, they kinda just materialized. After they appeared, she took off and was gone faster than I could blink.”

“What did the wings look like,” Marleigh pressed for more information. “Were they leathery like a bat's?”

“I didn't say she turned into a damn vampire,” Wyatt rolled his eyes and shook his head. “No. do you know how the Renaissance painters used to depict angels with fluffy feathered white wings?”

Wyatt had to google the name of the girl Dare City was named for but he knew that. Wonders would never cease. Marleigh nodded. “Yeah.” She had gotten way too fascinated by the work of Leonardo da Vinci after reading 'The Da Vinci Code.' She knew exactly what he was talking about.

Wyatt dropped his arms. “They look like that except they weren't white. They were, like, midnight purple.”

Marleigh raised an eyebrow. “Midnight purple? What the hell kind of color is midnight purple?”

“You know,” Wyatt waved his hand. “The purple is so dark it almost looks black...midnight purple.”

“Alrighty then,” Marleigh ran a tired hand over her face. “You dot think she needs to be reported?”

“Reported? Nah,” Wyatt shook his head. “I don't think she's a threat. She seems to be on an even keel and she has total control over her powers from what I could tell. I still wanna keep my eye on her for a little while though.”

Marleigh sighed. “Why?” Hadn't he just said that the bird woman was harmless?

“Because,” Wyatt said pointedly. “I don't think she's a pretahuman at all. I think she's something else entirely.”


	8. Charlotte

Marleigh wasn't sure what possessed her to do it but the following Friday, after school, she had told her father that she was taking a personal day from work, left Wyatt in charge of the office, and made the three-hour drive to Charlotte. The main branch of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Public Library had more archived newspapers and documents than any other branch in the state. The library held newspaper articles and historical documents that wouldn't be logged onto the world wide web for years to come if they ever would be logged at all. Unlike most young people from the iGen generation, Marleigh knew the value and rewards that came with looking beyond the internet for information. A lot of times you could learn more from cracking an actual book or digging through filing cabinets in dusty old archive rooms. Marleigh wanted to obtain copies of all the newspaper articles that related to both the Lochlan Warehouse explosion in 2000 and Hurricane Floyd in 1999. she wouldn't say no to any other books and documentation that they had as well.

Once Marleigh arrived in Charlotte she had spent half an hour driving in circles around the uptown area of the city before finally finding a parking spot not far from the Bank of America building. This required her to make a ten block walk to the library so she called her dad to check in just so he wouldn't worry. 

“Marleigh, honey, I really don't like you going into such a large city all by yourself. It could be dangerous.” Her old man sounded paranoid because he was. Marleigh had never known a time when her father wasn't anxious and worried about something or another.

Marleigh laughed. “Dad, I'm in Charlotte, no Chicago or Detroit. I think I'll be fine.”

She heard her father's sigh. “Just be careful. I expect you in this house by eleven.”

When Marleigh arrived at the library she bypassed the first floor and headed straight up to the information desk on the second. When she requested her needed materials the librarian gave her a funny look. “Why on God's green earth would you want to read about such horrible events?”

Marleigh barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes and say something snotty. “It's for a project at school,” she explained. “We're writing about the history of our town.”

“Well, okay,” the old bitty of a woman said with obvious distaste. “Quiet Bluff was mostly unaffected by Hurricane Floyd. I remember the news saying something about the town experiencing a lot of flooding and a usually high number of lightning strikes but that was about it. Hurricane Hugo did more damage a decade earlier.”

“Can I get any articles about the lightning show too? That could be cool to write about too.” She tried not to make too much of the fact that Quiet Bluff had experienced strange lightening at the exact same time that Sequoya had claimed 'spirits' had fallen to earth.

“I don't know why you'd want to write about the parts of the past.” The librarian hit a button on her computer and list of books printed out on the old as dirt printer that sat beside her on the counter. 

“Because history doesn't work the way that we want it to,” Maleigh shook her head. She had tried to keep her mouth shut, she really had. That had to count for something...right? “It's like that old quote by George Santayana. 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'”

“Whatever you say, dear.” The librarian handed her the printout. “Here are all the books we have on the topics. Give me about an hour and I'll have copies of those articles and documents you requested. Of course, there will be a ten dollar printing fee and a five dollar research fee.”

Marleigh dug a twenty dollar bill out of her pocket and slapped it on the counter. Who said information was free?


	9. A. Lachlan

Marleigh was in the office trying to stay awake as she finished filling out the monthly progress reports on the preterhumans the company kept their eye on. The clock was about to strike five and signal the end of her shift when Wyatt entered the office with a rather handsome and slightly older man. The tousled curly black hair and striking blue eyes made the man look like a mid-90's Calvin Klein model. The designer jeans and blue Armani dress shirt told whoever was looking that he came from money.

“Wyatt, what are you doing here?” It was his day off.

“I wanted to talk to you for a minute. Well, actually, he did.” Wyatt jerked his head towards the pretty boy.

Marleigh stood from her desk and walked over to the two men. “And you are..?”

The Backstreet Boy held out his hand. “My name's Patrick Lachlan. My father's –”

Marleigh held up a hand. “I know who your father is.” He owned the warehouse that exploded in 2000 and killed her mother. He was also the biggest donor to the college of her choice. She both respected and hated the reclusive billionaire at the same time. “What can I help you with?” She reluctantly shook his hand.

“I met with Principal Ruiz at your high school today on behalf of my father. My father's interested in funding a new computer lab for the school and he's also interested in helping to finance the school's volunteer program. I was told that the program was your brainchild.”

Shit. It was. The program had been started in her freshman year and required participants to volunteer in the community at least four days every month. Marleigh nodded her head. She had a very bad feeling about this.

“My father would like to meet with you to discuss the program's potential.”

Marleigh decided that the Joe Jonas wannabe's obsession with saying 'my father' could be turned into an incredibly intoxicating drinking game if she liked the taste of alcohol. “When?” She knew there was no way out of this. She couldn't turn down a meeting with Alistair Lachlan if she wanted any kind of chance of getting into Dare City University.

“My father's having a small dinner party at our family's home this Saturday.” Patrick handed her an emerald green envelope that bore the Lachlan family seal as Marleigh mentally took a shot of tequila. “He'd very much like it if you attended.”

***

Marleigh didn't open the envelope until late that night. She was sitting on her daybed, cleaning out her messenger bag when she pulled out the envelope that she had forgotten about. Thinking it nothing more than a harmless, boring invitation, she opened it...and ended up really wishing that she hadn't. A photograph fell out when she pulled out the cardstock note. Picking it up, she couldn't believe what she was seeing “No friggin' way,” she whispered as she quickly read the enclosed note.

**_*** Miss Chandler,_ **

**_Unless you want this photograph sent to every national news desk in the country you will come alone on Saturday night. Be sure to bring along those articles that you picked up in Charlotte. We have much to discuss._ **

**_-A. Lachlan. ***_ **


	10. Cousin & Curls

Saturday afternoon, Marleigh was a huge ball of nerves as she worked her afternoon shift at the office.

“Mar, are you okay?”

Marleigh jumped. She had been so lost in her own head as she reorganized the filing cabinet that she had forgotten that Wyatt was there.

“Yeah,” she gave him a weak smile as she ran her hand through her hair. “I'm just nervous about the dinner party tonight.” That was putting it mildly. “You know, I forgot to ask. How do you know Patrick Lachlan?”

“Oh, we met a few months back right after he moved back home for college.” Wyatt returned his attention to his computer screen. “His car broke down out on Route 9 and I lent him a hand.”

He was lying through his teeth. The only time Wyatt wouldn't meet her gaze was when he was lying to her.

“Are you going to this thing tonight?” Knowing that Alistair Lachlan was waiting to speak to her had her terrified. The information he had could be used to completely ruin more than one life.

Wyatt glanced back up and shook his head. “No. Patrick's got tickets for the Dare City Devils game tonight.”

Wasn't that convenient? Wyatt gets tickets to see his favorite baseball team play on the one night when she might need him. She'd bet her college education that Patrick's rich daddy was the one who had purchased the tickets.

***

“Seriously, Marleigh, stop fidgeting!”

Marleigh was being scolded by her cousin, Kristi, as the slightly younger woman stood behind her in the bathroom, curling her hair.

“I can't help it,” she grumbled. “You know I hate all this girlie crap.”

Marleigh watched in the mirror as Kristi rolled her eyes. “So you dated hippy/70s style suggests.”

Kristi was two years younger than Marleigh and the two young women were polar opposites. Marleigh was a bookish free spirit while Kristi was the stereotypical cheerleader and mean girl. Marleigh would seriously not be surprised if she learned that Kristi possessed a real-life burn book all 'Mean Girls' the movie.

“I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to insult you, Kristi,” Marleigh tried to appease the ice queen. She was the only hair stylist she knew that worked for compliments and not money. “I'm just super nervous about tonight. I've never been invited to something like this before.”

“There's nothing to it,” Kristi assured her as she returned to curling her cousin's hair. “Just look pretty, try to sound as mature as possible, and, if you're going to be doing any flirting, make sure that the guy isn't friends with your dad.”

Marleigh chuckled. “I sincerely hope that you are kidding.” If she wasn't Kristi had one hell of a career as an escort ahead of her after high school ended because everyone knew the girl wasn't getting into college. “Did you bring the dress I asked for?”

She was once again treated to the sight of Kristi rolling her eyes. “Of course I brought the dress. I'm not an idiot.”

Her pre-SAT scores begged to differ.


	11. Manipulation & Tact

A limousine had been dispatched to retrieve Marleigh for the party. This had been a pleasant surprise but it did nothing to calm her nerves. Twenty minutes later, when the sleek, black luxury vehicle pulled up outside the front doors of the imposing Lachlan Manor, a stone structure that closely resembled an old Scottish castle, Marleigh couldn't help but notice the lack of other cars. There was also no one walking about the mansion's vast, perfectly manicured lawns or in the elaborate gardens. The only outdoor lighting came from security lights that dotted around the property. This wasn't the atmosphere one expected at a fancy dinner party.

The limo driver held her door open while the house's chief butler helped Marleigh out and led her up the stone steps and into the house's entrance hall.

The entrance hall of the mansion would probably fit the entire ground floor of the Chandler house. The walls were paneled with expensive cherry wood and the floors were made of black marble. Along the walls hung watercolor paintings that depicted different moments in Quiet Bluff's history. The hall was beautiful but looked much too expensive to be inviting, like a room inside Buckingham Palace. 

“If you'll wait here, ma'am, I shall go and inform the master that you have arrived.” The pristine butler spoke with an English accent and behaved like a character out of a Dickens' novel. 

“Are any of the other guests here or am I the first to arrive?”

The butler ignored her question. As though he had not heard her, he turned on his heel and walked away.

“Okay, you didn't introduce yourself and just walked off all creepy-like. That totally doesn't make me feel like I've just fallen into the opening scene of a horror movie or anything,” Marleigh mumbled to herself.

With nothing better to do, while she waited, Marleigh wandered around the massive hall. She found a mini indoor waterfall in one corner. It had depictions of Roman soldiers carved into its stone and was surrounded by tropical plants and flowers. To protect the plants and the rest of the house from water and heat damage, the small oasis was surrounded on all sides by a glass wall that was almost completely invisible to the naked eye. Along an entire wall was a massive bookshelf that had to contain hundreds of volumes all on the history and geography of North Carolina. 

“Miss Chandler,” a deep baritone, country-laced voice almost scared her to death.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Marleigh found herself clutching her chest. “You scared the hell out of me.”

The middle-aged man who stood before her was tall, at least six feet. His eyes were a striking blue and Marleigh couldn't tell his hair color because his head was shaved completely bald. With his chiseled jaw and obviously muscular frame, the Lex Luthor look actually worked for him. “That wasn't my intention, Miss Chandler. I'm Alistair Lachlan.” He held out his hand to her. “I appreciate you meeting with me this evening.”

Marleigh shook his hand and rolled her eyes. “You really didn't give me much of a choice in the matter.”

Alistair chuckled as he released her hand. “I hope you'll forgive me for being so manipulative in getting you here. I tend to avoid society as a while so tact isn't my strong suit.” He shoved his hands into the pants pockets of his expensive Armani suit. “I'm sure you've already figured out that you're my only guest tonight.”

She nodded and huffed. “I let my cousin play Barbie with me for no good reason.” Never. The. Hell. Again.

Marleigh watched with a small shiver, of delight or horror, she didn't know, as Alistair's eyes slowly traveled up her body, starting at her toes, and taking in the sight of her in Kristi's barely appropriate black cocktail dress and heels.

“Oh, I wouldn't say that,” Alistair smirked. “Come, we have much to talk about my dear.”

Marleigh gulped. She was in big trouble. She just knew it.


	12. A Twilight Fan at a Harry Potter Convention

Lachlan led Marleigh through the vast mansion. After exiting the entrance hall, he led her through a long hallway. The hall was illuminated (barely) with old fashion wall sconce lights. The light that hit the portraits that lined the red-wallpapered walls was muted and made the subjects look like eerie characters out of a Tim Burton film. After the hallway came a large conservatory that was humid and filled with more plants and flowers native to the Carolinas. Lachlan was proud of his home state, that much was obvious. Once free from the heat of the conservatory, and now completely freezing, Marleigh followed Lachlan into a room that seemed to be three rooms in one. It was equal parts office/sitting room/library. One half of the room was lined with books on every subject under the sun. in front of one of the large picture windows stood a grand desk that looked as though it had been made with very expensive wood. The other half of the room was a sitting area. A comfortable brown leather sofa was situated next to the cobblestone fireplace facing a plasma screen television that hung from the wood-paneled wall. Two purple-cloth armchairs were situated right in front of the fire, facing the glass-topped wagon-wheel coffee table.

Lachlan took a seat in the leather chair behind the desk and nodded for her to take a seat in one of the two uncomfortable stiff-backed wood and leather chairs that sat in front of it. “Have a seat, Miss Chandler.”

Marleigh sat down but she kept her guard up. “Those photographs you sent me – where did you get them?”

“A tracker that's in my employ took them,” Lachlan leaned back in his chair as he spoke. “Now it's my turn to ask a question. How long have you known about Wyatt Dawson?”

“I've suspected he was a preterhuman since we were twelve. I got confirmation of those suspicions a week ago when you sent me those photos.” Marleigh crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. “Why did you have a tracker tailing Wyatt in the first place?”

“I always look into the backgrounds of my son's friends,” Lachlan shrugged. “You really didn't know?”

Marleigh slowly shook her head. She hadn't known because she hadn't wanted to know. 

“You, my beautiful girl, have a reputation as one of the best trackers in the Carolinas. At eighteen, you're the youngest licensed tracker in the world.” He had obviously looked into her history as well as Wyatt's. “I take it you're good enough at your job to understand the significance of what Wyatt can do? There's no one else like him and there never has been.”

Not true. It's just that the last guy lived roughly fifteen hundred years ago and had walked on water before obtaining painful new piercings in his hands and feet. “I know how big a story it would be if word got out,” Marleigh nodded. She knew what he was getting at and helped him along. 

“Good,” Lachlan smirked. He surprised her by getting to his feet. “Now that we have an understanding about that, I should be a good host and feed you.” He walked around the desk and to her side. He held out his hand to her. 

Marleigh was looking at him in confusion as she allowed him to help her to her feet. “Don't we have more to talk about?”

Lachlan nodded. “Over dinner, we'll discuss the details of your new job and, after that, you can show me what you found in Charlotte.”

That did nothing to ease Marleigh's anxiety. She was still as confused as a _Twilight_ fan at a _Harry Potter_ convention. What the hell was going on?


	13. Lightning Strikes

Marleigh had expected dinner to be served in some massive dining room with a mile-long wooden table ala a _Scooby Doo_ cartoon. In actuality, the meal was served outdoors, at a small table set up on a second-floor balcony.

Marleigh was able to be polite and play nice during both the soup and the salad courses. By the time the roast duck and grilled vegetables were served her patience had evaporated into nothing. “Alright, Lachlan. What job were you talking about? And I didn’t bring anything I got in Charlotte with me because there was nothing important. I barely got enough information to finish a school report.”

“You’re wrong,” Lachlan shook his head. “You did get something of interest during your little research trip to the Queen City. Did you not get an article about a freak lightning storm?”

Marleigh nodded. “During Hurricane Floyd, Quiet Bluff experienced an unusually high number of lightning strikes.”

“It set a record.” Lachlan took a sip of his wine. “That record was broken on May 2, 2000. It was lightning strike that started the fire at my warehouse that led to the disaster of that day.”

Marleigh pushed her plate away, having no appetite and no desire to pretend that she did. “Okay...? What are you trying to say?”

“I don’t think those lightening strikes were natural or normal. I think those lightening strikes have something to do with the preterhumans.” Lachlan mirrored her actions and he too pushed away his meal.

Marleigh folded her arms atop the table and fixed the man in front of her with a piercing look. “The preterhumans were the result of a classified chemical in your warehouse being exposed to extreme heat and being released into the air.” She had read every document that the government had ever released about the disaster. She was one of the world’s best living trackers and her mother had been killed in that explosion. You damn well better believe that she knew the history and the science well.

Lachlan gave a short nod. “That is partially true. That nameless chemical did play a part in it. What most people don’t know, however, is that when the blood of preterhumans is tested, it contains an antibody that can not be tied to the chemical in any way. It’s never been seen before and it cannot be explained.”

“And this job?” Marleigh wasn’t about to argue with crazy that came with scientific backup.

“I want you to investigate Wyatt Dawson and report your findings back to me.” Lachlan’s voice took on a very business-like tone. “I want to know everything: his family history, the extent of his abilities, his daily routine. Now that I know he hasn’t shared his secret with you I understand that your job will be much more difficult. You can rest assured that you will be well compensated for all of your trouble.”

“Compensated how?” She had no intention whatsoever of betraying her best friend, but she couldn’t help but be curious.

“A thousand dollars a week plus acceptance to DCU as well as a full ride.”

Shit. She loved Wyatt to death but that was really friggin’ tempting. “What if I don’t accept the job? What if I say no?”

Lachlan leaned back in his chair and smirked evilly as a cool evening wind blew around them. “I’ll make sure that you never walk the halls of DCU and…I’ll send those photographs of Wyatt to every major media outlet in the world.”


	14. Terms & Revelations

Marleigh was screwed. She had been backed into a corner by Alistair Lachlan and she saw no way out. She either betrayed Wyatt’s trust and privacy or she allowed Lachlan to expose secrets and destroy his life. When preterhumans used their powers for the greater good of mankind they did it while hiding their identities for a reason. They didn’t want to end up on a tracker’s watch list and they didn’t want to be hounded by the press and the public at large.

“How do you sleep at night?” Marleigh was glaring at Lachlan as she climbed into the passenger seat of his Mercedes. He had insisted upon driving her home himself.

“Soundly,” Lachlan smirked and closed the car door before she could respond. He took his sweet time walking around to the driver’s seat and getting in the car himself. “I take it you’re agreeing to my terms?” He inquired as he started the ignition.

“I’m not the enemy here, sweetheart. Eventually you’ll see it for yourself. And you always have a choice.” Lachlan pulled to a stop at the red light at the end of his street. “You could come to your senses and realize that Wyatt Dawson isn’t worth your loyalty.”

Marleigh remembered something. She remembered who had given her the invitation to Lachlan’s ‘dinner party’ in the first place…and she remembered where he currently was and who he was with. “Wyatt’s not worth my loyalty but it’s totally cool for him to be friends with your only child? Patrick’s not really Wyatt’s friend. You have him keeping tabs on him.”

“Wrong, sweetheart.” Lachlan chuckled as turned onto the long winding stretch of road that led to her neighborhood. “Wyatt is Patrick’s boyfriend.”

Huh? She most definitely hadn’t been clued into Wyatt’s sexual orientation, but it didn’t surprise her. They lived in the south and homophobia still ran rampant. A lot of gay people hid their sexuality. It was sad and wrong but no less true. She was momentarily struck stupid before she started laughing.

“Do tell, what is it that you find so amusing?” Lachlan didn’t take his eyes off the road and when Marleigh finally allowed herself to look at him she saw that his jaw was clenched in anger. Alistair Lachlan was not a man who was used to being laughed at.

“All of this is because your son is gay,” she was still chuckling. “It’s 2018. Get over it, dude.”

This time is was Lachlan’s turn to laugh as he pulled the car to a stop on the curb outside of her house. “I’ve known my son is gay since he was thirteen and I was really rather fond of his last long-term boyfriend. My son’s sexuality has NOTHING to do with this. This is about his safety and the safety of this town. Wyatt Dawson is dangerous, make my words, sweetheart.”

“Whatever,” Marleigh rolled her eyes. “How is this going to work?”

“Every Friday after you leave work you are to come straight to my office in Dare City for your weekly progress report – and I will expect progress.”

Dare City? That was almost an hour’s long drive each way!

“A private car will pick you up and bring you home and my staff and security team have been notified and told to allow you access to my office.”

Of course, he had already made all the necessary arrangements. He knew there was almost zero chance of her saying no…he had made sure of that.


	15. Daniel 12:1

On Sunday morning, Marleigh surprised her father by showing up at the office.

“What are you doing here, pumpkin?” Tag looked up from the file he was reading. Marleigh typically didn’t work on the weekends.

Marleigh pasted a false smile on her face. “I have some research to do. Remember how I was invited to that dinner party by Patrick Lachlan?” She set her messenger bag down atop her desk.

“Yeah,” her dad grumbled, turning his attention back to the file in front of him. Tag Chandler hated any and all mention of his old boss or his family. After the way he had lost his beloved wife, you really couldn’t fault him for that.

“Well, at dinner I got to talking with Patrick’s dad, Mr. Lachlan about my plans to attend DCU. He told me about this scholarship his company is sponsoring.” She began pulling her notebook and the research materials that she had picked up in Charlotte out of her bag. She had rehearsed this lie over a hundred times in the last twenty-four hours. Lachlan had e-mailed her the night before with her cover story. Tag Chandler wasn’t a helicopter parents by any means but even he was bound to notice her frequent trips to Dare City. “He’s asked ten different seniors from across North Carolina to submit in-depth studies on preterhumans. The best essay wins a place at DCU as well as a full scholarship.” She didn’t look at her father as she turned on her computer. She could actually hear him grinding his teeth together.

“Ain’t that nice of him,” Tag slammed his desk drawer harder than necessary when he put his file away. He got to his feet after manually shutting off his computer by pressing the button – even though Marleigh had told him numerous times that he shouldn’t do that. “Don’t you share any sensitive information with him, ya hear?”

“Yes, sir.” If he only knew. Marleigh took a seat at her desk.

“I have a meeting in Dare City.” Tag walked over and kissed the top of her head. “See ya tonight, pumpkin.”

“Bye, Daddy,” Marleigh replied absentmindedly as she logged into her e-mail account. She was annoyed to find yet another e-mail from Lachlan. Opening it, she was incredibly confused by its contents.

The e-mail contained only a single Bible verse.

_*** “At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time; but at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book.”_

**_\- Daniel 12:1_** *** 

“What the holy hell?” Marleigh spoke to herself.

“Something wrong, mija?”

Marleigh jumped a little in her seat. Looking up from her computer screen, she found her father’s weekend tracker, Gabe Trevino, settling in at his desk. Gabe was a Mexican immigrant and a former United States Marine that freelanced his services to a few different tracking companies. He was six feet talk with dark brown hair and almost black eyes. He was covered from his neck down in tattoos and was built like a brick wall. If you didn’t know him, he was terrifying. If you did know him, you knew that he was nothing but a teddy bear. Still, getting on his bad side was never advisable. “I’m good,” she flashed him a smile as she hit the print button. Lachlan wouldn’t have sent the Bible verse if it didn’t mean something. “Her, Gabe, do you know anything about the Bible?”

Gabe gave her a strange look, like he was mildly frightened that she had joined the legions of born-again Christians that littered North Carolina and was about to attempt to ‘save’ him. “I was raised Catholic, so, sí,” he chuckled. “Why?”

“I’m trying to get a scholarship from Lachlan Industries.” This lying thing was getting easier with every lie she told. “One of the assignments I need to complete is to explain this Bible verse.” She stood and went and grabbed the print-out from the printer before making her way over to hand it to Gabe. “I’m a little lost.” That was the truth. She had never in her life stepped foot inside of a church. Her father didn’t believe in God. He didn’t believe that a loving God would ever allow a disaster like the one that occurred in 2000.

Gabe quickly scanned the verse before handing it back to her. “It’s talking about the archangel, Michael, coming to earth to protect God’s chosen, who’s names are written in the Book of Life on the day of Revelation.”

“Revelation?” Marleigh raised an eyebrow.

“Sí,” Gabe nodded. “In the Bible it says that Christ will come back to earth on Revelation Day and have his final showdown with the Devil.”

Marleigh had no idea why Lachlan would send her that verse. Going back to her computer, she went back to her e-mail and sent a reply to the insane billionaire.

_** I don’t get it. **_

Lachlan replied almost immediately.

***** Not yet, but you will. I expect Wyatt’s full family history at our meeting on Friday. *****


	16. Public Records

Marleigh felt like the world’s biggest creep – or a tabloid reporter, same thing – as she researched Wyatt and his family at the local public records office. With every photocopy that she made she felt a little less human. 

So far, she hadn’t come across anything interesting in her research – thank God. Wyatt’s mother, Catriona, was the daughter of Irish immigrants who had married up. His father, Charles, was a successful tobacco farmer whose family had been in Quiet Bluff since the turn of the 18th century. Unlike a lot of other established families in the Carolinas, the Dawson’s had no history of slave ownership and had been on the right side of the Civil War. The Dawson farm had even been a stopover on the Underground Railroad. The good deeds just kept on coming from there. The Dawson’s had been involved with one charity and cause after another for hundreds of years. They almost seemed _too_ good.

As soon as she had that last thought, Marleigh felt terrible. She had known Mr. and Mrs. Dawson her entire life and two nicer people you wouldn’t find anywhere. Her first job, when she was twelve years old, had been helping Mrs. Dawson sell her baked goods at the local farmer’s market. Her payment was twenty dollars and one red velvet cupcake, her favorite. It had been the sweet farmer’s wife that Marleigh’s dad had called in a hysterical panic the say she had gotten her first period. Mrs. Dawson had explained mother nature to her and then poured an incredibly tall glass of whiskey for her father.

“Marleigh, darlin’,” Miss Harris, the middle-aged clerk, approached as Marleigh stood at the copy machine finishing up her task of being a bad friend for the day. “I’m a tiny bit befuddled.”

So was Marleigh. Who in the world still used the word _befuddled_? “What do you mean? About what?” She grabbed her stack of still warm photocopies out of the tray.

“Are you looking for a birth certificate or an adoption decree for Wyatt Dawson? We only have the adoption decree. This young man wasn’t born here.” Miss Harris handed the document over. 

“Oh, yeah,” Marleigh forced a chuckle. “My mistake. Thank you.”

Marleigh waited for Miss Harris to retreat back to her desk and her Julie Garwood romance novel before looking at the document she had been handed. According to the adoption decree, Wyatt had been adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Dawson in the summer of 1999. The adoption had been handled privately and anonymously so the names of his birth parents had been blacked out. In all their years of friendship, Wyatt had never mentioned being adopted. It was possible he didn’t know himself, of course. Some adoptive parents took that secret to the grave. According to the decree, Wyatt hadn’t been born on American soil and then…Marleigh saw the name of the law firm that had handled the adoption. Davis & Sanders. That law firm worked almost exclusively for Alistair Lachlan and Lachlan Industries. There was no way in hell that Lachlan didn’t already know about Wyatt’s adoption. If his law firm was involved it stood to reason that he likely was as well. But if that was the case, why have Marleigh doing this research? He had to already know Wyatt’s family history. What was he playing at?


	17. The Villain of the Story

Friday had always been an elusive day of the week for Marleigh. It seemed to take forever and a day to arrive because it was the last day of both the school and workweek. Once Friday finally arrived, time seemed to speed up, only to return to its normal sluggish pace come Monday morning. That’s why Marleigh was amazed at how quickly Friday afternoon and, thus, her meeting with Lachlan, arrived. Before she knew it, she found herself in the hustle and bustle of Dare City. Not that she was given a chance to see much of North Carolina’s oldest and largest city. She was driven straight from to Lachlan Tower in the very heart of the city. Her nameless driver had parked in a private underground garage before escorting her to Lachlan’s personal elevator that then took her to the top floor of the 180-floor skyscraper. The only thing located on that level was Lachlan’s massive office.

When the elevator doors opened, she almost had a heart attack when she found Lachlan standing there waiting for her with his hands shoved into the pockets of his slacks. She tried to hold in her gasp, but she wasn’t quick enough, and he heard her.

Lachlan smiled. “For someone who’s job, at times, requires a great deal of stealth, you’re awfully jumpy, Miss Chandler.”

“Yeah, well, you have a very stalker-riffic way about you,” she shot back in return.

Lachlan simply shook his head in amusement before turning and leading her to the leather couch that sat up close to the wall-like windows that gave Marleigh a perfect view of the New York City of the South. Too bad she couldn’t bring herself to enjoy it.

“Did you bring the information that I requested this time?” Lachlan raised an eyebrow as he took a seat and gestured for her to join him.

Marleigh ignored the unspoken invitation as she reached inside her messenger bag and grabbed the file containing Wyatt’s family history. “You mean the family history that I’m almost certain that you already have?” She passed him the file. “Yeah, I got it.

“Miss Chandler, take a seat. I only bite when asked,” Lachlan drawled lazily.

A shiver ran down Marleigh’s spine, and the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stood up. She didn’t take the bait and respond to his comment, but she did take a seat…on the opposite side of the couch. “Why did you have me dig for information that I _know_ you already have? And my name is Marleigh, use it.”

“Well, _Marleigh_ ,” he stressed her name, “did you learn anything new about your so-called best friend?”

Marleigh grudgingly nodded her head. “Yeah, I found out he was adopted.”

“You don’t find it strange that he never told you about that?” Lachlan rolled his eyes at the distance that she had put between them. Then he reached out and grabbed her wrist, pulling her to sit beside him, their thighs now touching.

“Maybe he doesn’t know,” Marleigh reasoned as she tried to ignore the very physical reaction that she was having to the man beside her. He may be old enough to be her father, and he was undoubtedly blackmailing her, but her body wasn’t lying to her either. Marleigh was attracted to Alistair Lachlan.

“He knows,” Lachlan argued back. “I overheard him telling Patrick nearly a month ago. You’re his best friend in the world. Why would he keep a secret like that from you?”

“Wyatt keeps a lot of secrets,” and it was really starting to get to her. “I’m sure that he has a good reason,” she added to offset the bitterness she heard in her own voice.

“Oh, he has a reason,” Lachlan nodded. “I’m just not sure it’s a good one. And I asked you to get Wyatt’s family history so you would get just a taste of the secrets that boy is keeping from you. I want to earn your trust and your loyalty. So far, I have done nothing but be completely honest with you. Wyatt can’t say that, and yet you blindly trust him simply because he’s always been kind to you. I’m not the villain of the story here, Marleigh.”

Marleigh didn’t think of Lachlan as a villain. She wasn’t quite sure what she thought of him, but she knew that he wasn’t bad. He was, however, obsessed. He was obsessed with Wyatt and the idea that her best friend _was_ the villain of the story. With each new piece of information that she learned about Wyatt, she had a harder time defending him. She’d been serious when she said that her best friend was keeping a lot of secrets. Now she just needed to figure out why.


	18. Accepted

“Marleigh, the FedEx guy dropped this off for you.”

Marleigh had just arrived in the office when Wyatt held up a thickly packed express envelope that he had at his desk. She was running over an hour late because she was on the yearbook committee, and they were finalizing the 2018-2019 edition. It was the last yearbook that Marleigh would ever work on. She graduated in the spring. Before the whole mess with Lachlan had started, she had volunteered to be heavily involved with that year’s yearbook. Now, she really wished that she hadn’t. Between school, work, and Lachlan, she was already stretched too thin. She could barely find the time to use the bathroom, let alone edit a yearbook.

“There’s also an envelope from D.C.U. here for you.” Wyatt smirked at her before doing a quick spin in his chair.

Forgetting all about the package, Marleigh hurried over and snatched the envelope out of the undercover preterhuman’s hand. “Give me that!”

With all of the grace of a rampaging rhino, she tore into the envelope and unfolded the letter.

_*** Dear Miss Marleigh Ann Chandler,_

_We are pleased to inform you that you’ve been granted early acceptance to Dare City University under the **Alistair Lachlan Scholarship for Exceptional North Carolina Scholars**. You were recommended for this scholarship by Mr. Alistair Lachlan himself…***_

“Holy shit,” Marleigh whispered to herself. Lachlan had kept his word. She had a free ride to her dream school.

“Good news?” Wyatt raised an amused eyebrow.

“Yeah, great news,” she laughed happily. “Your boyfriend’s dad helped me get into D.C.U. on a full scholarship.”

Time seemed to stand still for a brief moment once Marleigh realized what she had just blurted out.

Wyatt looked like he had been struck stupid.

“Wyatt…” Marleigh started to apologize, but he held up a hand to stop her.

“How did you know?” Wyatt seemed to deflate a little as she slouched back in his chair.

“I’ve been doing some extra credit research work for Mr. Lachlan.” It wasn’t a total lie. “I meet with him in Dare City once a week. Last week I showed up early and overheard him making a Christmas gift list with his secretary. When she asked who Wyatt was, Mr. Lachlan told her you were Patrick’s boyfriend.” She was getting way too good at this lying thing. She made a mental note to e-mail Lachlan and make sure he bought Wyatt a Christmas gift to keep her cover.

“Oh,” was all Wyatt said, obviously buying her excuse. His happy grin was gone, and he would no longer meet her eye.

“I get that we don’t exactly live in a part of the country that accepts homosexuality easily, but I do.” She walked over and took a seat on Wyatt’s desk in front of him. “You don’t have to be scared of me knowing, and I’ll keep it to myself for as long as you want me to. You never have to be scared to tell me _anything_ , okay?”

Wyatt met her gaze and gave her a small smile. “I knew you were my best friend for a reason.”

“Do your parents know?”

“God, no!” Wyatt shook his head with a terrified look on his face. “My mom keeps pamphlets from the church on the evils of homosexuality…and a million other insane things.”

“A pamphlet like the ones Dr. Winters hands out that explain whatever illness you have?” The Chandlers weren’t a church-going family, and Marleigh suddenly found herself thankful for that.

“Yep,” Wyatt confirmed, “except my mom’s are covered in Bible verses that are used wildly out of context.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Jesus come to Earth to unite mankind…not drive it cuckoo for cocoa puffs?” She didn’t attend church, but she had flipped through a hotel Bible on occasion while on vacation.

Wyatt snorted. “Yeah, that was an epic failure.”


	19. Human E-mails

Marleigh didn’t get around to opening the _FedEx_ package until later that evening. She had waited until she was at home, sitting alone on her bed with the door locked because she knew what it contained.

A week earlier, Marleigh had put in a request with the _North Carolina State Police_ for any public records that contained Wyatt’s name. What she received blew her away. 288. That’s the number of times Wyatt had been named as a witness or good Samaritan at a crime or accident scene since he was twelve-years-old. He had done every good deed imaginable. He had stopped a purse snatching, pulled survivors out of car wrecks, and helped locate a missing kid in a state park while on vacation with his parents to the mountains of Boone.

Marleigh grabbed her laptop off of her nightstand and turned it on. Once it had booted up, she went to her e-mail and composed a message to Lachlan.

_***_ **SUBJECT:** _We need to talk…_

_Mr. Lachlan,_

_I’ve come across some information about Wyatt that might make you see him in a different light. Is there any way to meet up sooner than Friday so we can talk and I can show you what I’ve found?_

_I also received my acceptance letter from D.C.U. Thank you. I sincerely mean that. Going to school there has always been my greatest dream._

_Hope to hear back from you soon,_

_Marleigh_

_P.S. Make sure to get Wyatt a Christmas gift this year to keep my cover. Long story. ***_

After sending the e-mail, Marleigh stashed the massive stack of police reports in the small safe that she kept hidden under her bed. Then, list a normal teenage girl who wasn’t living in a bad _CW_ channel-style hellscape, she started on her homework. She breezed through her math and science assignments and was just about to start in on geography when her laptop made a high dinging sound, letting her know that she had an e-mail.

Setting her geography notebook aside, she pulled her computer closer. The e-mail was from Lachlan.

_*** Marleigh,_

_If you insist on me addressing you by your first name, I must ask that you refer to me as Alistair._

_You know where I live. I’m usually home by seven during the week. You’re always welcome to drop by. My staff has been informed that you may be a visitor so no one should give you a difficult time._

_And you’re more than welcome. Our arrangement aside, you are truly deserving of a place at D.C.U. I would not have recommended you if you were unfit to study there. I’ve seen your academic record. You’re precisely the kind of student that I had in mind when endowed that scholarship. D.C.U. should feel proud to have you. Just as I am proud to have you working with me._

_I’ll be sure to check and make sure that Wyatt’s on my Christmas list this year, but I must ask – what’s this long story? Color me intrigued._

_Yours,_

_Alistair ***_   
  


Marleigh was confused. She knew that Lac – Alistair wasn’t some evil supervillain, but she still wanted to hate him for what had dragged her into against her will. All because of a weird obsession with her best friend…but she couldn’t find it in herself to hate him. And she had tried…hard. With every interaction between them, Alistair revealed a little more of his human side, and it was a side of the older man that Marleigh genuinely liked. When that mixed with the physical attraction she felt for him; it left Marleigh feeling things that she wasn’t entirely comfortable with. She sent a one-sentence e-mail in reply.

_*** I’ll see you tomorrow when I get off work. ***_


	20. What is True May Appear Rotten…

Marleigh was so preoccupied with her thoughts of Alistair that she had completely forgotten about her geography homework that she was expected to turn in the next day. Rising at 5:30, her usual time, she spied her geography textbook and notes notebook lying on the floor next to the bed.

“Damn it,” she groaned, running a hand over her face. Foregoing her morning shower, Marleigh quickly brushed her teeth and washed her face before throwing on a pair of black leggings and her favorite beat to hell D.C.U. sweatshirt. It was as she was absentmindedly pulling a hairbrush through her tangled hair that used her free to open her notebook. She had been looking for her notes when she came upon the riddle that Sequoya had given her.

_*** What is true may appear rotten but common sense must not be forgotten. Not all is as depicted, bad are not all the gifted. Don’t fight what feels addictive, it’s a blessing, not a curse with which you afflicted. ***_

Those words suddenly held a lot more meaning for Marleigh than they did when the wackadoodle medicine woman had originally said them to her. Marleigh’s mind went back to the seemingly insane story that Sequoya had told her a few weeks earlier.

When Hurricane Floyd had struck the Carolinas on September 16, 1999, the ‘spirits’ fell to earth. The ‘spirits’ that fell didn’t come from ‘beyond the veil.’ They were always on earth, just on another plane of existence. The Lachlan Warehouse explosion had happened during a storm that was caused by the ‘Great Spirit’ sealing the gates between the plains. The ‘alpha’ walks with mankind and the ‘spirits,’ and he’s upset that the gates were closed.

With an uncomfortable feeling in her stomach, Marleigh used her phone to check her e-mail and read one of Alistair’s older e-mails.

_*** “At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time, but at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book.”_

**\- Daniel 12:1** _***_

Leaning back in her desk chair, Marleigh allowed herself to become lost in her thoughts. Was it possible that Sequoya wasn’t wholly cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs? Could the ‘alpha’ and the archangel Michael be one and the same? Without consciously thinking about what she was doing, she got up and retrieved the file that contained Wyatt’s adoption certificate. She looked at Wyatt’s birth date. September 16, 1999. She had known that for years, of course, but had felt the need to confirm it. If only for her own peace of mind. It didn’t make her feel any better.

“Fuck,” she ran a hand through her hair, her hairbrush long since forgotten. She took a deep breath and tried to keep in mind the first line of Sequoya’s riddle.

_*** “What is true may appear rotten, but common sense must not be forgotten…” ***_


	21. An Angel Among Us

By the time Marleigh got off work, she was so stressed and anxious that she was near tears. If one person said one wrong thing, she knew the waterworks would start. Marleigh had kept to herself as much as possible while at school and the office to avoid that happening. As soon as the clock struck five, she grabbed her things and hurried out the door without saying goodbye or so much as a backward glance.

She didn’t go home. Instead, she drove as fast as the speed limit didn’t allow to the Lachlan mansion. As Alistair had promised her, she had no problem being granted access to the house. The butler, whose name Marleigh still hadn’t learned, led her to the study where Alistair was seated at his desk working on a laptop computer.

Alistair looked up as the butler announced her. “Miss Chandler, to see you, sir.”

“Come in, sweetheart,” Alistair waved her in. “Eugene, there aren’t to be any interruptions while Miss Chandler is here.”

“Yes, sir.” Eugene bowed his head once before taking his leave and closing the door behind him.

Marleigh walked over and plopped down tiredly in one of the chairs in front of the desk.

“You seem out of sorts today,” Alistair observed as he shut his laptop. “What’s wrong?”

“I think Wyatt is hiding something bigger than simply being a preterhuman,” Marleigh admitted.

“You’ve finally started to put it all together for yourself.” Alistair nodded approvingly. “I had faith that you would.”

“I think angels are real,” Marleigh blurted out. “I think the archangel Michael has been on earth since 1999, and I think Wyatt’s connected to him somehow.” When she finished speaking, she sat back in her chair, closed her eyes, and waited for Alistair to laugh at her and call her crazy.

The laughter never came. Marleigh opened her eyes and jumped a little when she found that Alistair was now kneeling in front of her with a solemn expression on his handsome face. “You’re right,” he reached out and took her hand. “The only piece of the puzzle that you’re missing is who Michael is here on earth.”

“Who is it?” Marleigh’s voice was a mere whisper. “Give me that puzzle piece.”

“You already have it,” he squeezed her hand. “You just keep trying to force it in upside down.”

“No,” Marleigh shook her head, still not wanting to believe it.

“Yes,” Alistair nodded.

“A week ago, I was basically an atheist.” A tear managed to escape her eye and roll down her cheek. “Now you want me to believe that my best friend is an angel. This is too much, even for me.”

Alistair reached up and wiped the solitary tear off her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “You’re not carrying that knowledge alone, sweetheart.” He got to his feet and held out his hand to help her up.

“Call your dad. Make an excuse to stay the night here. It’s time for me to show and tell. We need to be equals in this.”

Marleigh wanted to scream. What exactly was _this_?


	22. The Video

Marleigh was mildly impressed that she had somehow managed to convince her dad that she was sleeping over at the cousin she despised’s house. After that, she accepted the glass of brandy that Alistair handed her before he set his laptop up on the coffee table and cued up a video.

Marleigh both recognized the room that was frozen on the screen and didn’t. “Is that your study?” She turned to look questioningly at Alistair as he sat down beside her on the couch. “It looks…off.”

“It looks off because that is what my study looked like on May 2, 2000.” He smirked when Marleigh grimaced at the taste of the brandy he had given her. He reached over and took the tumbler out of her hand.

“The study was damaged in the explosion?” Marleigh’s voice was raspy from the unexpected burn of the alcohol. She was not a fan of brandy, she decided.

“It was.” Alistair threw back the tumbler of brandy with ease before setting it aside. “The thing is that while they mansion was damaged; it wasn’t nearly as bad as it should have been. I think this footage holds the answer why.

Marleigh leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest. She felt a little sick to her stomach. “So, this video is of the moment it happened? Why were you even recording in the first place?”

“Yes, this footage shows the moment the warehouse exploded.” Alistair seemed to be studying her as he spoke and Marleigh didn’t know why. “The security system that I employed back then recorded several rooms around the clock.”

Now Marleigh was incredibly uncomfortable and more than a little paranoid. “Are you recording us right now?”

Alistair chuckled. “No. I no longer contract out to the government and my son is no longer a child. I only record video in my office these days.”

Marleigh glared at him. “I’m not meeting with you there anymore.”

Alistair smirked again. “That’s fine, sweetheart. I find I rather enjoy having you in my home anyway.”

“Just play the damn video,” Marleigh snapped. She didn’t want the older man to see the effect his words really had on her.


	23. Risen

Marleigh did her damndest to keep her eyes on the video screen as Alistair pressed play. For a video that had been recorded at the start of the new millennium, it was surprisingly clear. There was no audio, a small miracle that Marleigh was thankful for. She watched as a younger Alistair spoke to a miniature Patrick. The little boy made himself comfortable on the couch just as a butler that she had never seen before entered the room. The butler exchanged words with Alistair as he stood behind his desk. She saw fear and panic on the billionaire's face as he seized his desk phone and brought it to his ear.

“Who were you talking to on the phone?” Marleigh hit the spacebar to stop the video.

“An employee who was informing me of the fire at the warehouse,” Alistair said evasively.

Marleigh had a gut feeling as she remembered some of the small things her usually silent father had let slip about that night over the years. “That’s my dad on the phone, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Alistair replied, but he would not look at her. He hit the spacebar and restarted the video.

Not even two seconds after the video resumed, a bright white light filled the screen. When it disappeared, Marleigh briefly saw Alistair unconscious on the ground and a visibly stunned Patrick on the couch. For a split second, she saw the shadow or outline of another man before the video went black.

“Who was the other guy? The one standing over you at the end?” Marleigh tried not to focus on the fact that she had just witnessed footage of the explosion that had killed her mother.

“There was only Patrick and me in that room, Marleigh. To make matters even stranger, what you saw, that blinding light and pulse of energy did not come from the warehouse explosion. That light and that shadow happened two seconds before the explosion. The video cuts out at the moment of the blast when my security system was destroyed.” He studied her like she was a potato clock at a science fair, and he was the teacher.

“Another fallen angel?” It was a guess, but what else could it be? You know what they said. If it looked like a duck…

“Not so much fallen as risen.”

“You have got to be fucking kidding me!”


	24. Everything Fits

“Your vulgar use of the English language is very unladylike, sweetheart.” Alistair was smirking at her.

Marleigh glared at him. “Bite me, you sexist son of a bitch.” She wasn’t really angry with him. She had just been thrown off-balance by all of the new information that she had learned. She didn’t like appearing weak and/or confused, so she acted like a bitch instead. “You want me to believe that my best friend is the archangel, Michael. Then you tell me that Lucifer is also one earth.”

“Who else?” Alistair raised an eyebrow. “Have you never read the Bible?”

Marleigh shook her head.

“I suspected as much,” Alistair nodded. “In the Bible, Michael is the leader of the army of Heaven. He would only be here if the End of Days was imminent.”

“If that’s the case, aren’t we totally screwed? The apocalypse is God’s will, and you can’t stop that.” She had never read the Bible, but she had seen enough TV and movies to know that much. Then, she remembered Sequoya’s words. The End of Days didn’t fit the story that she had been told. “This isn’t about the End of Days. Something’s wrong in Heaven. It’s something the Bible doesn’t talk about because they didn’t know it was coming.” Marleigh sounded half-past crazy on the cuckoo clock, even to her own ears. But, then again, so had everything that Alistair had said. If they were wrong, they could share a padded room at the Quiet Bluff Mental Health Center.

“And this theory of yours comes from..?” Alistair was looking at her skeptically. “You just said that you’ve never read the Bible.”

Marleigh fully intended to correct that as soon as possible. “Have you ever heard of a woman named Sequoya?”

Alistair shook his head. “I only make it my business to know about those who are of interest to me.” He gave her a pointed look that she chose to ignore.

“She’s a woman that I met a little while ago while I was researching a report for school.” She got to her feet and walked over to retrieve her messenger bag from the chair where she had dropped it when she arrived. Opening it, she grabbed her notebook and flipped to the page that contained the riddle. She walked back to the couch and handed the notebook to Alistair. “Read this,” she ordered.

Marleigh was silent as Alistair read the riddle. Once he was finished, she didn’t give him a chance to speak. She immediately launched into the story of the fallen alpha that Sequoya had told her.

“And what makes you think that she was telling the truth?” Alistair scoffed. “She reads palms for a living.”

“What makes you believe a book written over a thousand years ago?” Marleigh countered. “That thing has been translated into more languages than Harry Potter and chopped and pieced back together more times than a Kardashian.”

Alistair didn’t have a return argument for that.

“Plus, everything fits.” She flipped to a blank page in the notebook and grabbed a pen off the coffee table. She spent the next few hours trying to prove her point.


End file.
